It’s been quiet on the blog for a while, and I have found it hard to get the motivation to write anything for it. This isn’t due to being bored of writing for it, or a lack of interest. Mentally I have not been in the best place for a few weeks. I thought maybe a good place to talk about that would be here, considering I’ve posted about mental health on here before, and it was a big subject in my interview with Chris Pulman about a year ago.
The last time I properly went skateboarding was the day after my birthday – September 20th. I’ve ridden my skateboard a couple of times since (an hour down the local, a short skate on my drive), but I haven’t really been skateboarding. I’ve not seen anyone I skate with in almost a month.
I don’t want to go into the details of it – the summary is I started a new job, and truth be told a lot of my stresses and anxieties are coming from that. There’s a long story behind why I feel this way, but until it’s resolved I simply have to force myself through this feeling of hopeless depression and desperation to find a silver lining.
Everything feels like climbing a mountain. We’re still in the midst of a global pandemic. Brexit feels like it’s slowly ruining the country. As I type this my daughter, my wife and myself are all suffering from the first cold we’ve had in 2 years. There’s a background level of dread that is now being compounded by a level of dread and stress I feel at a very obvious level on a day to day basis.
Skateboarding is supposed to make you feel happy. But when you feel really low it can sometimes just make you feel worse. Have you ever been in an awful mood, and then tried to skate, and then felt so incredibly frustrated that you can’t land a simple trick, or you keep slamming, or any number of minor inconveniences out there in the world crop up in droves to ruin the skate?
I went down my local with the intention of meeting my buddy Ralph – except half an hour before I left for the park I did my back in. I got to the park, and could barely skate. Anything that involved bending down hurt like hell. And then later on, I found out Ralph couldn’t make it, so I just had to skate alone. I filmed a few tricks to at least make the most of the situation, but then when I got to my computer and went to transfer these off the memory card, I accidentally deleted the clips like an idiot.
It’s hard to dig deep and find that joy that skateboarding is meant to provide when you already have such a well of despair to fill before you can break even and start enjoying riding a skateboard. Finding time to even skate is a chore right now, and when depression begins to creep over it almost certainly will stop me from skating at all.
So, yeah. As much as I love skateboarding, and as much as this blog has been such a focus for me over the years, at the minute I need to put it on the back burner. There are things going on in my life that I need to have resolved before I can truly begin to enjoy the things that are important to me – and after that, maybe we’ll see more blog posts.
The Terrible Company 